A Legal Challenge to Animal Research

By P. Michael Conn
A Legal Challenge to Animal Research
Animal rights law courses may threaten the use of animals in medical research.
A. US law schools were categorized by whether they have an animal law course, are at an institution that performs animal research, or are associated directly with a medical school. Additionally, the rank of each law school according to the 2008 U.S. News & World Report was included.

By P. Michael Conn | December 1, 2009

A Legal Challenge to Animal Research

Animal rights law courses may threaten the use of animals in medical research.

A. US law schools were categorized by whether they have an animal law course, are at an institution that performs animal research, or are associated directly with a medical school. Additionally, the rank of each law school according to the 2008 U.S. News & World Report was included.

Over half of US law schools now have animal law courses, including many in universities with medical and research programs that utilize animals protected by federal welfare laws. Courses that promote standards for humane animal care and welfare are unlikely to provoke conflict, but programs championing animal rights or “liberation” set up adversarial potential on campuses and pose a serious risk to the future of animal research. The use of the law instead of violence and threats, however, should be acknowledged as a forward step.

According to the course catalogues of 203 law schools listed on the website for the Law School Admissions Council (LSAC.org), 111 (55%) teach an animal law course (B). Of 121 student groups throughout US law schools with a focus on animal law and animal rights, 85 are at schools with an animal law class while 37 are at schools without such a class. Accordingly, animal law, through either coursework or student groups, is being addressed at 148 (73%) of US law schools.

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Among the top 50 law schools in the country, 36 maintain at least one animal law course in their curriculum. Growth in animal law programs has been supported by contributions from “The Bob Barker Endowment Fund for the Study of Animal Rights Law,” providing $1 million gifts each to Harvard, Duke, Stanford, Columbia, and other universities.1

Considering the potential influence of these courses on research, the access that law schools have to the perspectives of scientists was measured, and defined by whether the home institution had a medical school or a Public Health Service Approved Animal Welfare Assurance. Eighty-three (41%) law schools have a connection to a medical school and 138 (68%) conduct animal research. Among the 111 schools teaching animal law, 44 (40%) have an institutional connection to a medical campus and 77 (69%) are housed in institutions that conduct animal research.

B. Overall distribution of law schools with an animal law class and associated with animal research or a medical school.

Under current US law, things are either property or persons. Legal rights for animals require the establishment of personhood; property cannot have rights. US welfare laws view animals as property, but emphasize our responsibility to care for them humanely. The effort to ascribe “personhood” to animals is a central focus of animal rights supporters, since changing public perception of animals is one way to stop their use in food, clothing, entertainment, and research. In some jurisdictions, “pet owner” has been replaced by “animal guardian,” ascribing a different status for the animal. References to animal researchers as “vivisectors” who “exploit” “sentient beings” and practice “torture” and “cruelty” (applied generally to research), also impact the public. In a poll earlier this year (May 7–10),2 only 57% felt that animal research was morally acceptable, down from 62% in 2004.

The future may see an attempt to recognize Aristotle’s three categories: things, animals, and persons. Animals may not ultimately enjoy the rights of persons, but the law may become increasingly specific about our obligation to care for them. If, on the other hand, “personhood” for animals is achieved, this status is likely to be in conflict with animal research.

Failure to address developments in the education of law students is likely to have a long-ranging impact on the ability to develop new treatments needed for human and animal well-being.

P. Michael Conn is Director of Research Advocacy at Oregon Health and Sciences University and Oregon National Primate Research Center.

Comments

The Animal Extremists are charting new territory in the Land of Bedlam, and trampling on both the civil liberties of individuals and the rights of Corporations and Universities daily.\n\nSince they rely on uninformed citizens to finance their unethical and immoral behavior, I suggest a quick fix: simply issue a public statement on behalf of all research scientists to the effect that "Sorry you and/or a loved one are suffering from a tragic/incurable disease. However, since PETA and HSUS value the life of lab rats more than yours, we are simply unable to continue trying to find a cure for your troubles. Our research facilities are being closed due to acts of terrorism and funding cuts led by supporters of these organizations. We suggest that you contact Ingrid Newkirk and Wayne Pacelle directly with your comments."\n\nMy bet? This horsecrap will come to an end real quickly. \n

It is too bad Dr. Conn has to characterize every animal welfare concern or the people who want to improve the welfare of animals as 'animal rights'. I think the study of animal welfare is excellent to have in the United States. As long as we: 1)continue to see the numbers of animals used in research increase in the US, 2)witness the US labs abiding by minimum usda regulations, and 3)observe drugs getting pulled from the market after being tested on at least 2 species of animals, there will always be a need to improve animal welfare and the research process. With Dr. Conn's wish, we have no hope of addressing factory farming and dog fighting, then, either, as these are very important animal welfare cases that could only be addressed by animal welfare attorneys. Dr. Conn's personal encounters with animal rights activists will forever bias him against all animal welfare advocates while allowing him to defend animal research without ever admitting there might need to be improvements made from his "side". Abnormal behavior, stressful procedures, species-inadequate housing, and animals dying from laboratory conditions are certainly welfare and scientific problems that need addressing - these problems still exist whether or not there is an animal activist extremist in your area. They can't be blamed for everything.

If Conn actually thinks that "Failure to address developments in the education of law students is likely to have a long-ranging impact on [animal experimentation]," he should contact the Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland, OR, near Conn's place of business, and offer to debate either the efficacy of the AWA and PHS regs or else the efficacy of the animal model at the school's annual and nationally reknown animal law conference. Dollars to doughnuts he won't. All the rhetoric coming out of the primate vivisection community of late has been more smoke than fire. Repeated requests by medical doctors to debate the scientific questions associated with animal models have been refused with the convenient claim that their critics are radicals. If true, and if Conn is genuinely worried about the potential power of animal law courses, it would behoove him to speak his brand of truth to power.

Your post is overblown in several instances.\n\nFirst, the "civil liberties of individuals and the rights of corporations and universities" are not without checks and balances. An increasing percentage of Americans believes that among those checks and balances is the prohibition of gratuitous and unproductive violence to sentient creatures in the interest of funding and careers.\n\nSecond, it is the very inability of decades of animal experiments to "find a cure for your troubles" that is the scientific basis for saying, "Enough. This has failed, and let's move on." Examples are endless, and include HIV vaccines as well as cures or substantial treatments for stroke, diabetes, paralysis, neurological diseases, autoimmune diseases, and cancers, among many other acute and chronic diseases.\n\nPlease note that ALL of these diseases have been "cured" in animal models, and all of these treatments have failed in patients.\n\nFinally, ad hominem attacks such as yours are an admission that you cannot engage the scientific or ethical debate. When you can't win the point, just shoot the messenger.\n\nThe "horsecrap" and the "unethical and immoral behavior" you attribute to us is more truly reflected in your own irrational and uninformed post. As a physician, scientist, educator, and former animal researcher myself, I know the score and the scam. You clearly do not.\n

This is a typical course description from a large University with an Animal Law class:\nAnimal law is the study of statutory and decisional law in which the nature?legal, social, or biological?of non-human animals is an important factor. A wide variety of issues are examined, including those that fall into the general categories of Torts, Property Law, Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Contracts, Wills/Trusts, and some selected Federal legislation. Animal law as presented in this course is not synonymous with ?animal rights? or with any particular political, moral, or ethical agenda. Rather, it is an objective and logical specialization of the law ? one with a growing number of cases and statutes, increasing public and practical interest, and significantly different historical, legal, and philosophical foundations than most other areas of law. \n\nI have to wonder what is so scary to the author about charging students with the academic and practical examination of this area of the law. It would be irresponsible not to educate our future legislators, judges, and lawyers, so that they have a sound basis and understanding of this area of the law. Social consciousness has always been part and parcel of lawmaking. Why should it be any different with respect to animal law? Teach the students, let them learn, and eventually animal related laws and policy will develop which reflect the needs, wants, and expectations of the population as a whole.

Hi John--you should really add "liar" to that list. Simply put, you do a complete disservice to all readers of your post through your misinformation\n\nYou listed an impressive number of conditions that haven't been "cured" despite the past century of animal research. If you would like to go back to 19th century medical practice, go ahead. But keep your cauterizing iron and trephine away from the rest of us, please. \n\nThe truth is treatment and survivability has been vastly improved in the past several decades and it's mostly due to animal research. These conditions and diseases that are modeled in animals are not actually "cured" in them. Improvements are seen in the modeled phenotype. Often times these improvements come with noticeable side effects. We as researchers then address the mechanisms by which symptoms have improved and by which side effects emerge. Further tweaking of treatment is done to increase gains and decrease side effects, until a favorable enough ratio is reached and the process toward human trial and treatment begins. And every medication that exists owes itself to a version of that process.\n\nTruly, there is a need to improve the efficiency of this process. But that is another discussion entirely.

I can see why you didn't want to post your name. Your convoluted defense of animal "guesswork" is as good an exposure of that failed paradigm as I have seen in a while. \n\nNo cures, unexpected adverse effects, unpredictable outcomes, tweaking to try to get something to justify use in humans, and so many "good" animal treatments that kill people. Vioxx was successful in at least 8 trials using six animal species, yet more Americans (60,000) were killed by Vioxx than in the Vietnam War.\n\nBut once it's out of the lab, it's not your problem, right?\n\nAnimal experiments have been the default position for at least five decades, but this has no more to do with successful treatments than wearing white coats has to do with being good doctors (or researchers). \n\nThe medical literature tells us that new treatments developed using animals are more likely to HARM patients than to help them. The FDA tells us that the clinical trial failure rate for drugs successful in animal tests is 92%, and that despite this marvelous and evolving practice you defend the failure rate has INCREASED from 86% in 1986. Nice work.\n\nThen you try to tell us that I'm a liar for pointing out that the emperor has no clothes. \n\nAnimal experimentation isn't science, it's like trying to start a car with the wrong key. Until practitioners like you decide to find the right key, you will continue the fifty year legacy of animal experimentation failures. \n\nThe good news of course is that science is overtaking you tunnel-vision guys, and growing genetics knowledge explains very clearly why animals can never tell us about humans. Maybe this is why the Institute of Medicine, the National Research Council of the National Academies, and the FDA Science Board have all urged transition to in vitro and human-based methods. I'll be glad to send you references.\n\nThe replacement of animals to study human diseases, test drugs and chemicals, and teach medicine to students is inevitable. Get on board or get out of the way. \n

We know animal tests are poor science. Official figures show that an astonishing 92 per cent of drugs tested on animals prove to be ineffective or unsafe for humans.\n\nAs renowned pathologist Dr Bruno Fedi points out, "The abolition of vivisection would in no way halt medical progress, just the opposite is the case. .... No surgeon can gain the least knowledge from experiments on animals, and all the great surgeons of the past and of the present day are in agreement on that".\n\n"Ask the experimenters why they experiment on animals, and the answer is: 'Because the animals are like us.' Ask the experimenters why it is morally acceptable to experiment on animals, and the answer is: 'Because the animals are not like us.' Animal experimentation rests on a logical contradiction."\n\n-Charles R. Magel, professor of philosophy\n \nOpposition to animal experimentation has a long history. The American Anti-Vivisection Society (AAVS) was founded by Caroline Earle White in 1883...long before PETA, which was founded in 1980, and even longer than before the current debate over stem-cell research! \n\nAn editorial in the now-defunct Animals' Agenda from 2001 or 2002, noted that animal research goes on unquestioned, while debate rages over stem-cell research, for no other reason than the stem-cells have human chromosomes. This is speciesism.\n\n"The women we recognize today as the founders of AAVS," writes Lily Santoro, "were pioneers in the world of animal welfare but not in the sphere of reform movements. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw a rise in reform movements known as the Progressive Era.\n\n"Inspired by the new science of sociology and cultural movements like the social gospel, middle and upper class Americans increasingly engaged in reform movements aimed at uplifting the downtrodden and improving society.\n\n"Women were central to the Progressive Era reforms. In the late nineteenth century, women made great strides in reform movements like Temperance, Sunday Schools, food and drug regulation, women's suffrage, and child-labor laws. \n\n"In a world where women were supposed to be relegated to their own 'separate sphere,' many women joined reform movements wherein they acted as the 'moral compass' of American society. Caring for the weak and voiceless in society was the focus of progressive era reforms. Animal welfare met this category perfectly."

Scientists worldwide use as much each year as the total that passes through one large grocery store meat counter in a year. \n\nScientists are targets rather than farmers because farmers and cowboys fight back with shotguns and dogs. If you doubt me, go to Dodge City Kansas and interfere with the operations there, or raid a ranch. \n\nScientists think about what they do, and take care to do it only when it is needed. Everyone else chows down meat from nice cuts of salmon to rare steak without a second thought. \n\nThe science is necessary. The consumption of meat is not.

John Pippin brings up two interesting points in this debate. The first is that the clinical trial failure rate for drugs successful in animal tests is 92%, and the second relates to writing anonymously.\n\nFrankly, I'll take that 8%, because 8% of a big number ends up being a pretty good pile of drugs that will help me or some other poor person out there to treat a serious number of conditions. And, 8% is infinitely better than the alternative with no animal research, 0%.\n\nPeople, you need to state your names on these posts for your points to be considered valid. Everyone in this debate needs to pick a side and get out there.\n\nFor those on the correct side, Barbara Haines presents a quote that every researcher should memorize or closely adapt. However, her horsecrap is not a strong enough word. Try public danger.

Paradise is vegan. Although man was made in God?s image and given dominion over all creation (Genesis 1:26-28), these verses do not justify humans killing animals and then devouring them, because God immediately proclaims He created the plants for human consumption. (Genesis 1:29) \n\nIn a letter to Pope John Paul II, challenging him on the issue of animal experimentation, Dr. Michael Fox of the Humane Society argued that the word "dominion" is derived from the original Hebrew word "rahe" which refers to compassionate stewardship, instead of power and control. Parents have dominion over their children; they do not have a license to kill, torment or abuse them. The Talmud (Shabbat 119; Sanhedrin 7) interprets "dominion" to mean animals may only be used for labor.\n\nRoman Catholic Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801-90), wrote in 1870 that "cruelty to animals is as if a man did not love God." On another occasion, he asked: \n \n"Now what is it that moves our very heart and sickens us so much at cruelty shown to poor brutes? I suppose this: first, that they have done us no harm; next, that they have no power whatever of resistance; it is the cowardice and tyranny of which they are the victims which make their sufferings so especially touching...there is something so very dreadful, so satanic, in tormenting those who have never harmed us and who cannot defend themselves; who are utterly in our power."\n \nCardinal Newman compared injustices against animals to the sacrifice, agony and death of Christ upon the cross: \n \n"Think of your feelings at cruelty practiced upon brute animals and you will gain the sort of feeling which the history of Christ?s cross and passion ought to excite within you. And let me add, this is in all cases one good use to which you may turn any...wanton and unfeeling acts shown towards the...animals; let them remind you, as a picture of Christ?s sufferings. He who is higher than the angels, deigned to humble Himself even to the state of the brute creation..."\n \nAnother cardinal, Henry Edward Manning (1808-92), spoke out against cruelty to animals, especially experimentation upon animals. In a letter dated July 13, 1891, he wrote: "We owe ourselves the duty not to be brutal or cruel; and we owe to God the duty of treating all His creatures according to His own perfections of love and mercy." \n \nBishop Westcott wrote, "Animals are in our power in a peculiar sense; they are committed by God to our sovereignty and we owe them a considerate regard for their rights. No animal life can be treated as a THING. Willful disrespect of the sanctities of physical life in one sphere bears its fruit in other and higher spheres."\n \nThe founder and first secretary of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) was an Anglican priest, the Reverend Arthur Broome. The RSPCA was originally founded as a Christian society "entirely based on the Christian Faith, and on Christian Principles," and sponsoring sermons on humane education in churches in London. The Society formed in 1824, and its first "Prospectus" spoke of the need to extend Christian charity and benevolence to the animals:\n \n"Our country is distinguished by the number and variety of its benevolent institutions...all breathing the pure spirit of Christian charity...But shall we stop here? Is the moral circle perfect so long as any power of doing good remains? Or can the infliction of cruelty on any being which the Almighty has endued with feelings of pain and pleasure consist with genuine and true benevolence?"\n\nThis Prospectus was signed by many leading 19th century Christians including William Wilberforce, Richard Martin, G. A. Hatch, J. Bonner, and Dr. Heslop.\n \nAn essay on "The Rights of Animals" by Dean William Ralph Inge (1860-1954) can be found in his 1926 book, Lay Thoughts of a Dean. It reads in part:\n \n"Our ancestors sinned in ignorance; they were taught (as I deeply regret to say one great Christian Church still teaches) that the world, with all that it contains, was made for man, and that the lower orders of creation have no claims upon us. But we no longer have the excuse of saying that we do not know; we do know that organic life on this planet is all woven of one stuff, and if we are children of our Heavenly Father, it must be true, as Christ told us, that no sparrow falls to the ground without His care. The new knowledge has revolutionized our ideas of our relations to the other living creatures who share the world with us, and it is our duty to consider seriously what this knowledge should mean for us in matters of conduct."\n \nDean Inge is reported to have said, "Whether animals believe in a god I do not know, but I do know that they believe in a devil?the devil which is man."\n \nChristian writer C.S. Lewis noted that animals were included in the first Passover. The application of the "blood of the lamb" on the doorposts, not only saved a man and his family from death that night in Egypt, it saved his animals as well. Lewis put forth a rational argument concerning the resurrection of animals in The Problem of Pain. His 1947 essay, "A Case for Abolition," attacked vivisection (animal experimentation) and reads as follows:\n \n"Once the old Christian idea of a total difference in kind between man and beast has been abandoned, then no argument for experiments on animals can be found which is not also an argument for experiments on inferior men. If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we re backing up our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reason. Indeed, experiments on men have already begun. We all hear that Nazi scientists have done them. We all suspect that our own scientists may begin to do so, in secret, at any moment.\n \n"The victory of vivisection marks a great advance in the triumph of ruthless, non-moral utilitarianism over the old world of ethical law; a triumph in which we, as well as animals, are already the victims, and of which Dachau and Hiroshima mark the more recent achievements. In justifying cruelty to animals we put ourselves also on the animal level. We choose the jungle and must abide by our choice."\n \nBritish Jesuit Father John Bligh observed, "A man is not likely to be much of a Christian if he is not kind to animals."\n \nA Roman Catholic priest, Msgr. LeRoy E. McWilliams of North Arlington, New Jersey, testified in October 1962 in favor of legislation to reduce the sufferings of laboratory animals. He told congressional representatives:\n \n"The first book of the Bible tell us that God created the animals and the birds, so they have the same Father as we do. God?s Fatherhood extends to our ?lesser brethren.? All animals belong to God; He alone is their absolute owner. In our relations with them, we must emulate the divine attributes, the highest of which is mercy. God, their Father and Creator, loves them tenderly. He lends them to us and adjures us to use them as He Himself would do.""\n \nMsgr. McWilliams also issued a letter to all seventeen thousand Catholic pastors in the United States, calling upon them to understand "what Christianity imposes on humans as their clear obligation to animals."\n \nResponding to a question about the Kingdom of Peace, Donald Soper was of the opinion that Jesus, unlike his brother James, was neither a teetotaler nor a vegetarian, but, "I think probably, if He were here today, He would be both." In a 1963 article on "The Question of Vivisection," Soper concluded: "...let me suggest that Dr. Schweitzer?s great claim that all life should be based on respect for personality has been too narrowly interpreted as being confined entirely to the personality of human beings. I believe that this creed ?respect for personality? must be applied to the whole of creation. I shouldn?t be surprised if the Buddhists are nearer to an understanding of it than we are.\n \n"When we apply this principle, we shall be facing innumerable problems, but I believe we shall be on the right track which leads finally to the end of violence and the achievement of a just social order which will leave none of God?s creatures out of that Kingdom which it is our Father?s good pleasure to give us."\n \n"I am not a Christian," wrote one animal rights activist in Animals, Men and Morals (1971), "but I find it incomprehensible that those who preach a doctrine of love and compassion can believe that the material pleasures of meat-eating justify the slaughter it requires."\n \nIn 1977, at an annual meeting in London of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), Dr. Donald Coggan, the Archbishop of Canterbury, said, "Animals, as part of God?s creation, have rights which must be respected. It behooves us always to be sensitive to their needs and to the reality of their pain."\n \nIn a paper presented before the Conference on Creation Theology and Environmental Ethics at the World Council of Churches in Annecy, France in September, 1988, Dr. Tom Regan expressed opposition to discrimination based upon genetic differences:\n \n"...biological differences inside the species Homo sapiens do not justify radically different treatment among those individual humans who differ biologically (for example, in terms of sex, or skin color, or chromosome count). Why, then, should biological differences outside our species count morally? If having one eye or deformed limbs do not disqualify a human being from moral consideration equal to that given to those humans who are more fortunate, how can it be rational to disqualify a rat or a wolf from equal moral consideration because, unlike us, they have paws and a tail?"\n \nDr. Regan concluded:\n \n"...the whole fabric of Christian agape is woven from the threads of sacrificial acts. To abstain, on principle, from eating animals, therefore, although it is not the end-all, can be the begin-all of our conscientious effort to journey back to (or toward) Eden, can be one way (among others) to re-establish or create that relationship to the earth which, if Genesis 1 is to be trusted, was part of God?s original hopes for and plans in creation.\n \n"It is the integrity of this creation we seek to understand and aspire to honor. In the choice of our food, I believe, we see, not in a glass darkly, but face to face, a small but not unimportant part of both the challenge and the promise of Christianity and animal rights."\n \nA growing number of Christian theologians, clergy and activists are beginning to take a stand in favor of animal rights. In a pamphlet entitled "Christian Considerations on Laboratory Animals," Reverend Marc Wessels notes that in laboratories animals cease to be persons and become "tools of research." He cites William French of Loyala University as having made the same observation at a gathering of Christian ethicists at Duke University?a conference entitled "Good News for Animals?"

Mohammed spoke of the rewards and punishments one would receive depending on one?s treatment of animals. He once told his companions he had a vision of a woman being punished in hell because she had starved a cat to death. "A good deed done to an animal is as meritorious as a good deed done to a human being," taught Mohammed, "while an act of cruelty to an animal is as bad as an act of cruelty to a human being."\n \nOn another occasion, the Prophet is recorded as having said, "He who takes pity even on a sparrow and spares its life, God will be merciful to him on the Day of Judgement...There is no man who kills even a sparrow, or anything smaller, without a justifiable cause, but God will question him about it."\n \nAgain, Mohammed is said to have taught that, "one who kills even a sparrow or anything smaller without a justifiable reason will be answerable to Allah." Muslim literature even records the Prophet forbidding the use of animal skins.\n \nMohammed took pity on beasts of burden. He forbade the beating of animals, as well as branding, striking, or painting them on the face. When the Prophet encountered a donkey that had been branded on the face, he exclaimed, "May Allah condemn the one who branded it." According to Mohammed, some animals were better than their riders. "Verily, there exist among the ridden ones some who are indeed better than their riders, and who praise their Lord more worthily."\n \nAccording to Islamic scholar B.A. Masri, "All kinds of animal fights are strictly forbidden in Islam." Mohammed forbade using living creatures as targets, and went so far as to condemn putting animals in cages, calling it "a great sin for man to imprison those animals which are in his power."\n \nMohammed even classified the unnecessary slaughter of animals as one of the seven deadly sins. "Avoid the seven abominations," he said, then referring to a verse from the Koran, "And kill not a living creature, which Allah has made sancrosanct, except for a justifiable reason."\n \nDr. Masri writes that: "According to the spirit and overall teachings of Islam, causing avoidable pain and suffering to the defenseless and innocent creatures of God is not justifiable under any circumstances."\n \nOn the issue of animal experimentation, Dr. Masri points out that: "Many of the experiments that are being done on animals in the name of scientific research and education are not really necessary and are sheer cruelty. Such experiments are a contradiction in terms of the Islamic teachings...According to Islam, all life is sancrosant and has a right to protection and preservation."\n \nLike the Bible, the Koran also describes God?s blessings to mankind as essentially vegetarian, in verses similar to Genesis 1:29:\n \n"Therewith He causes crops to grow for you, and the olive and the date-palm and grapes and all kinds of fruit. Lo! Herein is indeed a portent for people who reflect."\n\n---Koran, surah 16, verse 11\n \n"A token unto them is the dead earth. We revive it, and We bring forth from it grain?so that they will eat thereof. And We have placed therein gardens of the date-palm and grapes, and We have caused springs of water to gush forth therein. That they may not eat of the fruit thereof and their hands created it not. Will they not, then, give thanks?"\n \n---Koran, surah 36, verses 33-35\n \n"Let man reflect on the food he eats: how We poured out the rain abundantly, and split the earth into fissures, and how We then made the grains to grow, and vines and reeds, olives and palms and gardens and fruits and pastures?an enjoyment for you and your cattle to delight in.\n \n"It is God who sends down water out of the sky, and with it quickens the earth after it is dead. Surely, in that is a sign for people who have ears to hear. In cattle, too, there is a lesson for you: We give you to drink of what is in their bellies, between filth and blood?pure milk, sweet to those who drink.\n \n"And We give you the fruits of the palms and the vines from which you derive sweet-tasting liquid and fair provision. Indeed, this is a sign for men of understanding.\n \n"And your Lord inspires the bees, saying, ?Build your homes in the mountains, in the trees and in the thatch of roots, then feed on every kind of fruit and follow the ways of your Lord, so easy to go upon.? Then there comes forth out of their bellies a liquid of various colors wherein is healing for men. Truly, this is a sign for people who reflect."\n \nDr. M. Hafiz Syed writes that the Prophet taught worshippers who eat animal flesh to wash out their mouths before going to pray. It is a Muslim custom to clean one?s mouth before prayer, but many biographers record Mohammed giving this instruction only in regards to meat, and not to any other kind of food.

If one views this whole bruhaha as an inappropriate politicization of what should be a scientific question of relationship between human and non-human species then, it is justified to remain anonymous and refuse to contribute in name - at this level - to what is an inappropriate reincarnation of Lysenkoism. That is, taking half-baked pseudo-scientific and pseudo-philosophical assertions and using them as a basis for policy, on the one hand, and, on the other, using only narrow political arguments about immediate medical benefits lost, as the only reason for not proceeding, is a fools argument out of which no good can come. \n\nAs evidence of the political bent of the animal-rights groups, one needs look no further than their preference for attacking scientists (a relatively small and impotent political constituency) and not pet owners (a relatively huge and important political constituency). If scientific labs produced the millions of dis-functional genetic freaks that are common place and prized by pet breeders and fanciers, the animal rights groups would have some validity in screaming "enough already, this is sick". But they don't because theirs is a political cause without integrity or objective merit.\n\nAs for the defenders of non-human animal research, their almost exclusive focus on the "medical benefits", with which the largest most important constituency can immediately identify, and their near total disregard for the larger fields of basic physiology, neurophysiology, macro-behavior, and brain-behavior research (from which, BTW, most current medial knowledge evolved) not only belies a narrow political slant toward self-interested special interests, but a pathetic disregard for those other, as or more, important fields of study that rely entirely on non-human animal research. Fighting fire with fire is foolish when there is ample water about to quench the flames.

Long time ago -it was believed that the earth is center of Universe, I remember this when one strongly argues that animal experiment is good because it is beneficial to Mankind. Why this Men centric attitude? Who tells that Men is most important creature on this earth? I can visulise the two non human animals might be talking on idiotics of men and laughing at us? -that men is not only polluting this world but living miserable life -as they (Men) is full of tensions and worries of career, family upbringing, teenage children, false ego, jealousy, sexual starvation fear of GOD to name a few!!!\n\nI think that some thing is done since last 50 yrs may not always be right -one can always rectify.\n\nIf society respects Scientists than society should also know how to trust Scientist -that whenever the animal experiment is done the scientist has already exhausted the other mean of research (in vitro, in silico etc), and scientist also has empathy on animals under the study -till the time there is a way out to avoid the animal experimentation completely.\n\n(Advance apology for not giving my name -you see I am searching a JOB and not wanting to spoil my chances to get one!)\n\n

Smoking was once thought non-carcinogenic because smoking-related cancer is hard to reproduce in lab animals. Many continued to smoke and to die from cancer. Benzene was not withdrawn from use as an industrial chemical despite clinical and epidemiological evidence that exposure caused leukemia in humans, because manufacturer-supported tests failed to reproduce leukemia in mice. Animal experiments on rats, hamsters, guinea pigs, mice, monkeys, and baboons revealed no link between glass fibers and cancer. Not until 1991, due to human studies, did the government label it carcinogenic.\n\nThough arsenic was a known human carcinogen for decades, scientists still found little evidence in animals to support the conclusion as late as 1977. This was the accepted view until it was produced in lab animals. Many continued to be exposed to asbestos and die because scientists could not reproduce the cancer in lab animals.\n\nPacemakers and heart valves were delayed in development because of physiological differences between animals they were designed on and humans. Animal models of heart disease failed to show that a high cholesterol and high fat diet increases the risk of coronary artery disease. Instead of switching to a vegetarian or vegan diet to prevent the disease, people continued their lifestyles with a false sense of security. Patients received medications that were harmful and/or ineffective due to animal models of stroke.\n\nAnimal studies predicted that beta-blockers would not lower blood pressure. This withheld their development. Even animal experimenters admitted the failure of animal models of hypertension in this regard, but in the meantime, there were thousands more stroke victims.\n\nOver half of the 198 new medications released between 1976 and 1985 were either withdrawn or relabeled secondary to severe unpredicted side effects. These side effects included complications like lethal dysrhythmias, heart attacks, kidney failure, seizures, respiratory arrest, liver failure, and stroke, among others. Flosint, an arthritis medication, was tested on rats, monkeys and dogs; all tolerated the medication well. In humans, however, it caused deaths.\n\nClioquinol, an antidiarrheal, passed tests in rats, cats, dogs and rabbits. It was pulled off the shelves all over the world in 1982 after it was found to cause blindness and paralysis in humans. Eraldin, a medication for heart disease, caused 23 deaths despite the fact that no harmful effects could be shown in animals. When introduced, scientists said it noted for the thoroughness of the toxicity studies on animals. It caused blindness and deaths in humans. Afterwards, scientists were unable to reproduce these results in animals.\n\nZomax, another arthritis drug, killed 14 people and caused many more to suffer. The dose of isoproterenol, a medication used to treat asthma, was worked out in animals. Unfortunately, it was much too toxic for humans. Thirty five hundred asthmatics died in Great Britain alone due to overdose. It is still difficult to reproduce these results in animals. Suprofen, an arthritis drug, was withdrawn from the market when patients suffered kidney toxicity. Prior to its release researchers had this to say about the animal tests: ?...excellent safety profile. No ...cardiac, renal, or CNS [central nervous system] effects in any species.?\n\nCylert (pemoline), a medication used to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder, caused liver failure in 13 children. Eleven either died or needed a liver transplant.\n\nThe diet drug combination of fenfluramine and dexfenfluramine was linked to heart valve abnormalities and taken off the market although animal studies ?had never revealed heart abnormalities.? The diabetes medication troglitazone, better known as Rezulin, was tested on animals without significant problems, but caused liver damage in humans. The company admitted that at least one patient had died and another had to undergo a liver transplant as a result.\n\nDespite the ineffectiveness of penicillin in his rabbits, Alexander Fleming used the antibiotic on a very sick patient since he had nothing else to try. Luckily, Fleming?s initial tests were not on guinea pigs or hamsters?it kills them. Howard Florey, the Nobel Prize winner credited with co-discovering and manufacturing penicillin, stated: ?How fortunate we didn?t have these animal tests in the 1940s, for penicillin would probably never been granted a license, and possibly the whole field of antibiotics might never have been realized.?\n\nThe notoriously dangerous drugs thalidomide and DES were tested in animals and released. Tens of thousands suffered and died as a result. Animal experiments misinformed researchers about how rapidly HIV replicates. Based on this false information, patients did not receive prompt therapies and their lives were shortened.\n\nAnimal-based research delayed the development of the polio vaccine, according to Dr. Albert Sabin, its inventor. The first rabies and polio vaccines worked well on animals but crippled or killed the people who tried them. Researchers who work with animals have succumbed to illness and death due to exposure to diseases that though harmless to the animal host (such as Hepatitis-B), kill humans.\n\nTime, funding, and resources devoted to animal experiments could have gone to human-based research. Clinical studies, in vitro research, autopsies, post-marketing drug surveillance, computer modeling, epidemiology, and genetic research pose no hazard to humans and provide accurate results. Importantly, animal experiments have exhausted resources that could have been dedicated to educating the public about health hazards and health maintenance, therein diminishing the incidence of diseases that require treatment. Vivisection is scientific fraud. Animal experimentation does not make sense. Human-based science prevents disease and creates valid therapies.

I am constantly baffled by the people defending animal rights. Not so much for defending the right of animals, which is a good enough thing, but for their apparent assumption that researchers working with animal models have a complete disregard for the animals and are portrayed as murderous maniacs and torturers. No one working with animals enjoys killing them. Also, the practical problems with animal models makes these highly undesirable. There is biological background noise and the experiments are very costly and require a highly developed infrastructure. Therefore, when animals are used for studies (excepting the behavioral ones described in a post below), they are already used as a last resort.\n\nRegarding the article itself, my position is that teaching 'animal law' (since apparently no such thing really exist since animals are possessions) is a good thing. It allows equal rights to people for and against the use of animal models and educates the people that should uphold the law in the future so that they can correctly argue the valid points. This is not bad for science, and equally is not good for people who have taken it on themselves to 'protect' animal rights. It just means that the discussions reaches the right level. It is a huge step forward from the terrorist tactics used by extreme animal rights activists who are vandalizing, terrorizing and in extreme cases try to kill people they disagree with.\n\nJesper

Replace animal experiments. Testing on animals is not only cruel, its benefit for humans is doubtful.\n\nBy John J. Pippin\n\nThere are many things wrong with the use of intimidation and violence in the critical debate over animal research. In addition to being anathema in our society, such tactics obscure important issues regarding animal experiments and human health.\n\nI am a cardiologist and a former animal researcher. I stopped experimenting on animals after I came to doubt the medical value of such research. Today, a growing number of physicians, scientists and scientific agencies believe that moving to non-animal research and testing methods is critical to advancing human health.\n\nNumerous reports confirm very poor correlations between animal research results and human results, and the research breakthroughs so optimistically reported in the media almost always fail in humans.\n\nExamples abound. Every one of 197 human trials using 85 HIV/AIDS vaccines tested in animals has failed. More than 150 human stroke trials using treatments successful in animals have failed, as have at least two dozen animal diabetes cures.\n\nVioxx was tested successfully in eight studies using six animal species, yet this anti-inflammatory medication may have caused the deaths of more Americans than the Vietnam War.\n\nThe monoclonal antibody TGN1412 was safe in monkeys at 500 times the dose tested in humans, yet all six British volunteers who received the drug in 2006 nearly died.\n\nConversely, simple aspirin produces birth defects in at least seven animal species, yet is safe in human pregnancy. When even identical human twins have different disease susceptibilities, how can we think answers will be found in mice or monkeys?\n\nThe National Cancer Institute now uses panels of human cells and tissues to test treatments for cancer and HIV/AIDS, and to detect drug toxicities. And the National Research Council now recommends replacing animal toxicity testing with in vitro methods.\n\nI can attest that animal research is inherently cruel. Animal protection laws do not mitigate this reality. Whether the debate involves humane issues or human benefits, the evidence confirms the need to replace animal experiments with more\naccurate human-specific methods. That's the best way to make progress and improve health.\n\nJohn J. Pippin is a senior medical and research adviser with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM). \n\nThe Physicians' Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) reports that the following advances in medicine were all made without animal research:\n\n1. Discovery of the relationship between cholesterol and heart disease -- America's No. 1 killer.\n\n2. Discovery of the relationship between smoking and lung cancer and between nutrition and cancer -- the second biggest killer of Americans.\n\n3. Discovery of the relationship between hypertension and stroke -- the No. 3 killer of Americans.\n\n4. Discovery of the causes of trauma, the fourth largest killer of Americans, and the measures to prevent it.\n\n5. Elucidation of the causes of many forms of respiratory disease, America's No. 5 cause of death.\n\n6. Isolation of the AIDS virus.\n\n7. Discovery of the mechanism of AIDS transmission.\n\n8. Discovery of penicillin and its curative effect on various infectious diseases.\n\n9. Development of X-rays.\n\n10. Development of anti-depressant and anti-psychotic drugs.\n\nThe PCRM further reports that the use of animals in education, consumer product testing and medical research is ineffective and obsolete. In vitro research, epidemiologic studies, clinical research and computer modeling yield more accurate results.\n\nLet animal slavery join human slavery in the graveyard of the past. Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for "entertainment."

You know, I had turkey for dinner tonight and I'm sure glad someone killed it for me. In fact I don't know if it was tortured or not but it was tasty.\n\nSome things we simply don't really think too much about and others we tend to spend too much time with. But don't worry, I no longer do in vivo experiments or any other experiments. In fact since my background is mostly in vivo I can't seem to get hired and have been out of work, from science, for nearly six years. Don't fret, however, industry will get its in vivo data elsewhere (wherever my job went) possibly from China, India or in my case Italy.\n

On what basis have we arbitrarily decreed that only humans can have rights and other animals cannot? Is it because most members of the human species possess a higher level of intelligence than most animals? Then why do we protect mentally defective humans? Isn?t this a personal, or rather, an anthropomorphic prejudice?\n\nIn his book, Christianity and the Rights of Animals, the Reverend Andrew Linzey, an Anglican priest, writes:\n\n"It does seem somewhat disingenuous for Christians to speak so solidly for human rights and then query the appropriateness of rights language when it comes to animals. The most consistent position is that of Raymond Frey, who opposes all claims for rights from a philosophical perspective, or that of Christians who consistently refrain from all such language."\n\nAccording to Reverend Linzey:\n\n"Raymond Frey, that dedicated opponent of rights theory, has sadly to conclude that ?we cannot, without the appeal to benefit, justify (painful) animal experiments without justifying (painful) human experiments.?\n\n"Frey accepts this even though he justifies experimentation on animals. Again, ?The case for anti-vivisectionism, I think, is far stronger than most people allow,? he writes. Alas, Frey does not seem to regard it as sufficiently strong to oppose experiments on animals or humans."\n\n"Although I may disagree with some of its underlying principles," writes pro-life activist Karen Swallow Prior, "there is much for me, an anti-abortion activist, to respect in the animal rights movement. Animal rights activists, like me, have risked personal safety and reputation for the sake of other living beings. Animal rights activists, like me, are viewed by many in the mainstream as fanatical wackos, ironically exhorted by irritated passerby to ?Get a life!?\n\n"Animal rights activists, like me, place a higher value on life than on personal comfort and convenience and, in balancing the sometimes competing interests of rights and responsibilities, choose to err on the side of compassion and non-violence."\n\nKathleen Marquardt, founded Putting People First, an anti-animal rights group. In her 1993 book, Animal Scam: The Beastly Abuse of Human Rights, she says:\n\n"The real agenda of this movement is not to give rights to animals, but to take rights from people?to dictate our food, clothing, work, recreation, and whether we will discover new medications or die." Identical assertions could have been made about the abolition of human slavery, the crusade to end child labor, the liberation of concentration camp prisoners from Nazi physicians or an end to the experimentation upon black humans by white humans.\n\nMarquardt writes that the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) "now encourages vegetarianism, the banning of fur, and the eventual end to all animal research, not just ?cruel? animal research." Marquardt writes that the Humane Society now supports vegetarianism.\n\nAccording to Marquardt, "The typical animal rights activist is a white woman making about $30,000 a year. She is most likely a schoolteacher, nurse, or government worker. She usually has a college degree or even an advanced degree, is in her thirties or forties, and lives in a city."\n\nMarquardt cites studies indicating that animal rights activists tend to identify with liberal causes such as feminism and environmentalism. "Every year," writes the Reverend Andrew Linzey, "I receive hundreds of anguished letters from Christians who are so distressed by the insensitivity to animals shown by mainstream churches that they have left them or are on the verge of doing so." It is not surprising, therefore, that Marquardt reports that "Most activists share a bias against Western civilization and its Judeo-Christian foundations."\n\nAccording to Marquardt, the "political clout" of the animal rights movement "is surprisingly bipartisan. But most of the leading politicians working with the animal rights movement are liberal Democrats." Marquardt makes mention of Senator Barbara Boxer of California, Nevada Congressman Jim Bilbray, Charlie Rose of North Carolina, Tom Lantos and Gerry Studds.\n\nMarquardt admits, however, that "some Republicans are animal rightists, too. Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas often supports animal rights causes?except, of course, those pertaining to cattle, a major business in Kansas. Senator Robert Smith of New Hampshire was a founder of the Congressional Friends of Animals. Bob Dornan of California, one of the most conservative House members, is an animal rights advocate?he cosponsored legislation banning the use of animals in testing cosmetics and received a PETA award. And Manhattan Congressman Bill Green promoted legislation that would have shut down over 90 million acres of federal land to hunting, fishing, and trapping."\n\nMarquardt states further that "Although he?s not an elected official, a conservative political figure who, surprisingly, is on the other side is G. Gordon Liddy, author Will and a key figure in the 1972 Watergate uproar. When I went on Liddy?s radio show, he and PETA?s Ingrid Newkirk greeted each other with hugs and kisses and lots of warm words.\n\n"With allies in both political parties and across the ideological spectrum," concludes Marquardt, "the animal rights movement has been able to score some great successes, regardless of which party controls the White House or Capitol Hill."\n\nAccording to Kathleen Marquardt, "We value the life of any human being?let alone that of a loved one?more than that of a dog, pig, or baboon." Isn?t this merely an anthropomorphic prejudice? Membership in the human species as a criterion for personhood is comparable to racism or sexism?discrimination.\n\nKathleen Marquardt unsuccessfully tries to equate animal rights with Nazism in Animal Scam. She claims that Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian, and that he suffered from depression, mood swings, irritability, and agitation, all of which are symptoms of a vitamin B-12 deficiency, and that animal products are the only dietary source of vitamin B-12.\n\nAccording to Carol Orsag, in Irving Wallace and David Wallechinsky?s The People?s Almanac (1975), however, Adolf Hitler consumed animal products in the form of eggs and dairy products, and enjoyed eggs "prepared 101 different ways by the best chef in Germany." He "became vegetarian because of stomach problems" rather than out of compassion for animals, and "was criticized for eating pig?s knuckles."\n\nIn a 1996 article, "Nazis and Animals: Debunking the Myths," Roberta Kalechofsky of Jews for Animal Rights states that Hitler "had a special fondness for sausages and caviar, and sometimes ham," as well as "liver dumplings." Kalechofsky states further that the Nazis experimented on animals as well as humans in the concentration camps:\n\n"The evidence of Nazi experiments on animals is overwhelming. In The Dark Face of Science, author John Vyvyan summed it up correctly: ?The experiments made on prisoners were many and diverse, but they had one thing in common: all were in continuation of, or complementary to, experiments on animals. In every instance, this antecedent scientific literature is mentioned in the evidence, and at Buchenwald and Auschwitz concentration camps, human and animal experiments were carried out simultaneously as parts of a single programme.?"\n\nAccording to Marquardt: "Having equated animals with man, the Nazis proceeded to treat men as animals." Marquardt wants to have it both ways. She wants to show that the Nazis? "respect for life" somehow led to a devaluation of human life. But would not a genuine reverence for life?elevating animal rights to the level of human rights?have had the opposite effect? Compassion for every living creature? There is no evidence that vegetarianism (for health or ethics) will make people saints or give them Gandhian compassion, but neither is there any evidence that it will make people Nazis.\n\nIsaac Bashevis Singer, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature, became a vegetarian in 1962. He once asked, "How can we pray to God for mercy if we ourselves have no mercy? How can we speak of rights and justice if we take an innocent creature and shed its blood?"\n\nHitler?s so-called "vegetarianism" did not prevent Isaac Bashevis Singer from comparing humanity?s mass killing of 50 billion animals every year to the Nazi Holocaust. In 1987 he wrote, "This is my protest against the conduct of the world. To be a vegetarian is to disagree?to disagree with the course of things today. Nuclear power, starvation, cruelty?we must make a statement against these things. Vegetarianism is my statement. And I think it?s a strong one."\n\nIsaac Bashevis Singer has also expressed the view that unnecessary violence against animals by human beings will only lead to further violence in human society: "I personally believe that as long as human beings will go on shedding the blood of animals, there will never be any peace. There is only one little step from killing animals to creating gas chambers a? la Hitler and concentration camps a? la Stalin?all such deeds are done in the name of ?social justice.? There will be no justice as long as man will stand with a knife or with a gun and destroy those who are weaker than he is."\n\nProfessor Henry Bigelow observed: "There will come a time when the world will look back to modern vivisection in the name of science as they do now to burning at the stake in the name of religion."\n\nAnimal rights, as a secular, moral philosophy, may appear to be at odds with traditional religious thinking (e.g., human "dominion" over other animals), but this is equally true of democracy and representative government in place of the divine right of kings, the separation of church and state, the abolition of human slavery, the emancipation of women, birth control, the sexual revolution, lesbian and gay rights, and perhaps every kind of social progress since the end of the Dark Ages and the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment.\n\nSome of the greatest figures in human history have been in favor of ethical vegetarianism and animal rights. These include: Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas Gandhi, Alice Walker, George Bernard Shaw, Robert Browning, Percy Shelley, Voltaire, Thomas Hardy, Rachel Carson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Victor Hugo, John Stuart Mill, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Pythagoras, Susan B. Anthony, Albert Schweitzer, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Gertrude Stein, Frederick Douglass, Francis Bacon, William Wordsworth, the Buddha, Mark Twain, and Henry David Thoreau.\n\nAbraham Lincoln once said: "I care not for a man?s religion whose dog or cat are not the better for it." Some of the most distinguished figures in the history of Christianity have also been vegetarian. A partial list includes: St. James, St. Matthew, Clemens Prudentius, Origen, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, St. Basil, St. John Chrysostom, St. Jerome, Aegidius, St. Benedict, Boniface, St. Richard of Wyche, St. Thomas More, St. Filippo Neri, St. Columba, John Wray, Thomas Tryon, John Wesley, Joshua Evans, William Metcalfe, General William Booth, Ellen White, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, and Reverend V.A. Holmes-Gore.\n\nThe number of animals killed for food in the United States is 70 times larger than the number of animals killed in laboratories, 30 times larger than the number killed by hunters and trappers, and 500 times larger than the number of animals killed in animal pounds.\n\nDebates over euthanasia, spaying and neutering, animal welfare versus rights, using sex to sell nonviolence, etc. seem trivial in comparison to the number of animals killed for food. Friends Of Animals, an animal rights organization, based in Darien, CT, sells buttons stating "Veganism is Direct Action."\n\nI think everyone in the animal rights movement would agree on that point.

According to the Winter 2008 Animal Action Report, published by the National Anti-Vivisection Society, it's a sign of the times for animals. Half of the 200 law schools in the U.S. currently offer animal law classes. 119 student animal law organizations have been established in U.S. law schools. The American Bar Association has established an Animal Law Committee as part of its Tort Trial Insurance Practice Section. And 16 state bar associations and 11 city and regional bar associations have Animal Law Committees.

Humans can legally exploit and kill other animals because the law gives us the right to own property and because nonhuman beings are designated as property. If animal personhood is recognized, humans would NOT lose the right to own property, and the rights of nonhumans to life and to belong to themselves would be protected. So there is, I think, a false paradox in the notion that animal rights oppose human rights. And it's nonsense to suggest (as does Kathleen Marquardt) that the "real agenda of this [animal rights] movement is ...to take rights from people". \n\nNonhuman animals are conscious beings who can think and feel and experience emotions. We have a moral obligation to use and further develop non-animal research until the animal moded becomes a shame of the past. \n\nEllie Maldonado

In response to Jesper, millions of nonhuman animals are sacrificed in the name of research each year. So I don't think animal research is a last resort. It may be costly to purchase nonhuman primates, but other nonhumans are not expensive. And in some states it's still legal for labs to use dogs and cats from shelters free of charge. \n\nStill, breeding animals for research is an industry of itself, since the profit is made by selling millions of nonhuman beings. Pet food companies that manufacture food for lab animals also make a profit. \n\nI think animal rights is moral issue. Just as human slavery was always wrong long before it was outlawed, so is animal research. \n\nEllie Maldonado

Vasu Murti: "Friends of Animals, an animal rights organization, based in Darien, CT, sells buttons stating "Veganism is Direct Action". I think everyone in the animal rights movement would agree on that point."\n\n\nThat's for sure! Cheers to Friends of Animals and all who truly advocate for animal rights! \n\nEllie Maldonado

Conn claims, with little explanation, that the growth of animal law may threaten animal research at universities that have both animal research programs and animal law courses. Conn suggests that some courses aim to indoctrinate students into the animal rights movement. Without citing a single example, he claims that ?programs championing animal rights or ?liberation? set up adversarial potential on campuses and pose a serious risk to the future of animal research.? Where such ?programs? exist remains a mystery. There is no doubt that increased legal awareness of animal rights could, and hopefully will, limit our ability to use animals as objects, but given the disciplinary organization of universities, even courses that do investigate fundamental questions about legal rights and animal personhood have no mechanism for interfering with the conduct of other departments. \n\nCryptically, Conn warns that ?[f]ailure to address developments in the education of law students is likely to have a long-ranging impact on the ability to develop new treatments needed for human and animal well-being.? How exactly animal researchers hope to ?address developments in the education of law students? is unclear, but there is no doubt that at least a few animal research programs have attempted to block the addition of animal law courses or at least alter their content. (Curiously, these are often the same researchers who wave the flag of ?academic freedom? whenever anyone questions the merits of their research.) Considering the numerous reports of intense animal suffering at Conn?s own OHSU, perhaps he should turn his attention back to what happens in his own department.